Napoleonic Rules - Lasalle from Honour Publishing

Sam Mustafa's latest publication through his company; Honour Publishing.

I know I'm a bit of rules junky, not as mad as some but fairly serious. Napoleonics was one of the periods that I had sworn off buying any new rules for. I have long since narrowed my choices down to either Napoleon's Battles (for which I have all the editions) or Age of Eagles. Now Sam Mustafa has brought out a new edition of Lasalle, the original was published in 2009 I think. That particular rule set really brought about a renaissance in Napoleonic gaming in my area. I know that my local game shop at the time sold at least 40 copies of the rulebook and my club (the League of Extraordinary Gamers or LEG) invested a considerably amount of time in putting together a tournament at Genghis Con trying to build on that excitement. That is the tournament that I constructed 16 6'x4' game mats for. We were anticipating upwards of 32 participants and I think we ended up with 8. 

I gave up on the 1st edition of Lasalle relatively quickly. While I have no particular problems with the rules and concepts I did have a problem with the armies and their generic feel (at least that's what I remember, I went looking for those rules and right now I have no idea where I put them). For the most part I find many of Sam's concepts and ideas pretty exciting and innovative  I haven't been excited enough to delve into any of his other rule sets. For the most part I'm happy with the rules I have picked as my "standard" go to sets. Now Sam has released a "revised" edition of Lasalle and I was curious enough to pick it up.

From a production standpoint this is a beautiful softbound rulebook with all the colors and graphics that you would expect from Honour Publishing. It is well written and well organized, and there are all kinds of charts and chapters that can be downloaded directly from the Honour Publishing web site. I think the most intriguing of the downloads is the Army Maker. While it could have been in the book, leaving it out reduces the size and cost of the rule book and allows updates as needed by Honouring Publishing. 

While the basic concepts are the same, this appears to be more than just a revision. While I will need to sit down and actual play it seems like there are some significant changes in how things work for the better. The Army Maker file is a huge bonus and I think moves the rule set up to something you could use to produce historical battles when you want to. I'm looking forward to making a deeper dive into it as time permits. Right now I think this one is certainly worth adding to your collection.